Athletes often spend countless hours training in order to improve their skill level so that they can become more competitive in sporting events, such as basketball games, soccer games, hockey games, and games of other sports. In an effort to assist athletes in improving their skill level, systems have been developed that track an athlete's performance while training or playing a game and then provide feedback indicative of the performance. Such feedback can then be evaluated for helping the athlete to improve his skill level. As an example, commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,094,164 describes a system that tracks the trajectory of a basketball during a basketball shot so that the shooter can use feedback from the system for the purpose of improving his skill at shooting basketballs.
Tracking the dribbling and/or passing performance of a player, such as a basketball, soccer, or hockey player, presents various challenges that may limit the effectiveness of a tracking system that attempts to assess dribbling or passing performance. As an example, a dribble or pass is often very short in duration and can occur at relatively high speeds. In addition, dribbling can involve the ball or puck changing direction and speed frequently. Further, the ball or puck being dribbled or passed often becomes at least temporarily hidden from view by players as they dribble or pass or guard against the player dribbling or passing making it difficult to consistently and accurately track the dribbles or passes over time. Further, unlike some other activities, such as shooting a basketball where an ideal trajectory can be characterized through certain parameters (e.g., entry angle) that do not significantly vary from shot-to-shot, the characteristics of an ideal dribble or pass can vary drastically depending on the dribbler's or passer's situation making it difficult to accurately assess the dribbler's or passer's performance and skill level. Due to these and other challenges, very few attempts have been made to develop systems that attempt to track dribbling and/or passing performance for training or coaching purposes.